Bash Script - Using sed or similar? HELP!

[sc0rpi0n]

Hey guys,

I've been searching and searching and hell I can't find the solution to my problem. Maybe someone here can shed some light on the problem.

Here goes...

Basically, here is my 'sample code' ...

sn=30
var1=`echo "Johnny" |wc -L`
res=`echo "${sn}-${var1}" |bc`

First line is just a variable definition.
Second line is printing out the length of characters, in this case "6".
Third line is calculating "30-6" to echo me "24". Which it does.

At this point, I want to use (perhaps 'sed'?) to write a file with "Johnny" and 24 white spaces after.

So in my file, I would have: Johnny[24 spaces]

How can I achieve this?

Someone please help me

Thanks!

Scorp.

[likwid]

Well, a few ways you could do this. An easy one is

echo -n "Johnny" > outfile
COUNTER=0
while [ $COUNTER -le $res ]; do
   echo -n ' ' >> outfile
   let COUNTER+=1
done

[sc0rpi0n]

Hey,

Is there another way to do this?

For some reason this won't work in my code.

Let me know if there's any other method that I can use.

Thanks!

P.

[ghostdog74]

echo "Johnny" | awk '{l=30-length($0);j="%s%"l"s"
 printf j , l," " > "outfile"
}'

[radoulov]

...

sn=30
var1="Johnny"
printf "%-"$sn"s\n" "$var1">yourfile